Fancy can lay only the past and the future under her copying-paper: and every actual presence of the object sets limits to her power: just as water distilled from roses, according to the old naturalists, lost its power exactly at the periodical blooming of the rose.

THE older, the more tranquil, and pious a man is, so much the more holy does he esteem all that is innate, that is, feeling and power; whereas in the estimate of the multitude whatsoever is self-acquired, the ability of practice and science in general has an undue pre-eminence; for the latter is universally appreciated, and therefore even by those who have it not, but the former not at all. In the twilight and the moonshine the fixed stars, which are suns, retire and veil themselves in obscurity; whilst the planets, which are simply earths, preserve their borrowed light unobscured. The elder races of men, amongst whom man was more, though he had not yet become so much, had a childlike feeling of sympathy with all the gifts of the Infinite--for example, with strength--beauty--and good fortune; and even the involuntary had a sanctity in their eyes, and was to them a prophecy and a revelation: hence the value they ascribed, and the art of interpretation they applied, to the speeches of children--of madmen--of drunkards--and of dreamers.

As the blind man knows not light, and through that ignorance also of necessity knows not darkness,--so likewise, but for disinterestedness we should know nothing of selfishness, but for slavery nothing of freedom: there are perhaps in this world many things which remain obscure to us for want of alternating with their opposites.

Derham remarks in his Physico-theology that the deaf hear best in the midst of noise, as, for instance, during the ringing of bells, &c. This must be the reason, I suppose, that the thundering of drums, cannons, &c., accompany the entrance into cities of princes and ministers, who are generally rather deaf, in order that they may the better hear the petitions and complaints of the people.

Miscellaneous Pieces.